The Old Regime and the Revolution

The Revolution that claimed to break with the past, shown finishing the work of the kings it overthrew.

by Alexis de Tocqueville559 passages held

French, the original language

Original title: L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution
First published: 1856(aged 51)
Original language: French

Overview

The revolutionaries of 1789 said they had broken with everything that came before them. Alexis de Tocqueville's book of 1856 argues that on the point that mattered most they were wrong: the centralised state the Revolution took pride in had been built under the kings, by royal officials called intendants who governed the provinces on instructions from Paris long before 1789. The Revolution abolished the nobility's privileges, kept the machine, and passed it on, first to the people and then to a new autocracy. Tocqueville came to the question after politics had closed to him. He opposed Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's coup of December 1851, was held for a time at Vincennes, and left public life; he spent the next years in the archives at Tours, reading the papers of the old royal administration. The book adds a second paradox. The Revolution broke out in the most advanced country in Europe, at a moment when burdens were lightening, because every privilege that remained grew harder to bear as the others fell away. Sociologists now call this the Tocqueville effect. Only the first volume was ever finished: Tocqueville meant a second on the Revolution itself, and he died in April 1859 with it incomplete. The book reached a seventh edition by 1866. François Furet, the historian of the Revolution, built part of his 1978 reinterpretation of it on this book. Other historians have objected that Tocqueville generalised from the district around Tours, close to Paris and loyal to the crown, and that his account of the intendants' reach needs qualifying for the rest of France.

Key concepts

What does Tocqueville mean by administrative centralisation?

The running of a country's local affairs from the capital, through appointed officials rather than local bodies. Under the old monarchy, royal intendants governed the provinces on instructions from Paris. The Old Regime and the Revolution argues that this system, not the Revolution, created the centralised French state, and that it survived 1789 to serve the people and then a new autocracy.

What is the Tocqueville effect?

The paradox that revolutions can break out as conditions improve rather than as they worsen. The Old Regime and the Revolution observes that France rose when it was the most advanced country in Europe and its burdens were lightening, because every privilege that remained grew harder to bear as the others fell away. Sociologists later gave the paradox Tocqueville's name.

What did the Revolution abolish, and what did it keep?

It abolished the privileges of the nobility and kept the administrative machine the kings had built. That division is the book's central finding: the break of 1789 was real in society and illusory in government. The centralised state passed intact to the revolutionaries, who took pride in it as their own work, and after them to the people and a new autocracy.

Why look for a revolution's causes in old administrative papers?

Because the continuity Tocqueville was after lived in the administration, not in the speeches. The declarations of 1789 announced a clean break; the correspondence of the royal officials showed what government had actually been doing for generations. Reading those papers at Tours let him test the revolutionaries' account of themselves against the record of how France had in fact been ruled.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Centralised State the Kings Built

Did the Revolution create the modern French state, or inherit it? Tocqueville's answer from the archives is that the machine was royal, and that 1789 kept it.

Long before 1789, royal officials called intendants governed the provinces on instructions from Paris, so the centralisation the revolutionaries took pride in was already waiting for them to inherit. Tocqueville found it in the papers of the old administration at Tours, which he read after Louis-Napoléon's coup had closed politics to him. The Revolution abolished the nobility's privileges but kept the machine, and passed it on, first to the people and then to a new autocracy. Its break with the past was real everywhere except where it mattered most.

centralization
administrative centralization
bureaucracy
public administration
local government
state power
political power
monarchy
revolution
historical method

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Why Revolution Came as Burdens Lightened

Why did the Revolution break out in Europe's most advanced country, just as life was getting easier? Because, Tocqueville argued, each remaining privilege grew harder to bear as the others fell.

Common sense expects revolt where oppression is heaviest. Tocqueville found the reverse: France was the most advanced country in Europe, and its burdens were lightening when it rose. The privileges that survived became less tolerable precisely because so many others had already gone. The paradox turns reform itself into a danger for the regime that attempts it, since every concession makes what is left more visible. Sociologists now call it the Tocqueville effect.

privilege
feudalism
taxation
aristocracy
social class
social hierarchy
social change
political reform
equality
public finance

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Within this work

passages held: 559
distinct concepts: 680
by passages held, corpus-wide: #128

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “local government” and “taxation”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 27 pairings. 81 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
local government	taxation	19
centralization	local government	10
bureaucracy	centralization	9
centralization	revolution	9
feudalism	taxation	9
social class	taxation	8
local government	social class	7
revolution	social class	7
bureaucracy	local government	6
bureaucracy	taxation	6
centralization	taxation	5
aristocracy	feudalism	4
aristocracy	social class	4
bureaucracy	revolution	4
feudalism	social class	4
aristocracy	centralization	3
aristocracy	local government	3
aristocracy	revolution	3
aristocracy	taxation	3
feudalism	local government	3
bureaucracy	social class	2
aristocracy	bureaucracy	1
centralization	feudalism	1
centralization	social class	1
feudalism	revolution	1
local government	revolution	1
revolution	taxation	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1835 Democracy in America (De la démocratie en Amérique)
The book that made Tocqueville's name, in two volumes of 1835 and 1840, drawn from his American journey of 1831–32; it carried him into the Académie française in 1841, at thirty-six.
FR
1835 Memoir on Pauperism (Mémoire sur le paupérisme)
Drawn from Tocqueville's visit to England in 1833, and read to the learned society of Cherbourg in 1835, the year the first volume of Democracy in America appeared.
FR
1848 Speech on the Right to Work (Discours sur la question du droit au travail)
On 12 September 1848, while he sat on the committee drafting the Second Republic's constitution, Tocqueville gave this speech urging the Constituent Assembly to keep a right to work out of it.
FR
1856 The Old Regime and the Revolution (L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution) you are here FR
1893 Recollections (Souvenirs)
Tocqueville's memoir, and a companion to his speeches of the same years: the Second Republic as he lived it in the Assembly and at the foreign ministry.
FR

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